Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism

The Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic’s gripping account of the “Terrible Year” in Paris and its enormous impact on the rise of Impressionism.

From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, Paris and its people were forced into surrender by Germans and imperiled as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French army after the burning of central Paris. As Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born—a reaction to violence, civil war, and political intrigue. Smee tells the story of Paris’s “Terrible Year” through the eyes of the Impressionists, with a focus on the relationship between Edouard Manet, the father of the movement, and Berthe Morisot, the group’s preeminent woman. With narrative sweep and vivid detail, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the pressures of the Siege and the chaos of the Commune had a monumental effect on the development of modern art.